Regulating T-cell metabolic reprogramming and blocking PD-1 co-promote personalized postoperative autologous nanovaccines

Engineering customized nanovaccines for enhanced cancer immunotherapy

Nanovaccines have gathered significant attention for their potential to elicit tumor-specific immunological responses. Despite notable progress in tumor immunotherapy, nanovaccines still encounter considerable challenges such as low delivery efficiency, limited targeting ability, and suboptimal efficacy. With an aim of addressing these issues, engineering customized nanovaccines through modification or functionalization has emerged as a promising approach. These tailored nanovaccines not only enhance antigen presentation, but also effectively modulate immunosuppression within the tumor microenvironment. Specifically, they are distinguished by their diverse sizes, shapes, charges, structures, and unique physicochemical properties, along with targeting ligands. These features of nanovaccines facilitate lymph node accumulation and activation/regulation of immune cells. This overview of bespoke nanovaccines underscores their potential in both prophylactic and therapeutic applications, offering insights into their future development and role in cancer immunotherapy.

Reprogramming of lipid metabolism in the tumor microenvironment: a strategy for tumor immunotherapy

Lipid metabolism in cancer cells has garnered increasing attention in recent decades. Cancer cells thrive in hypoxic conditions, nutrient deficiency, and oxidative stress and cannot be separated from alterations in lipid metabolism. Therefore, cancer cells exhibit increased lipid metabolism, lipid uptake, lipogenesis and storage to adapt to a progressively challenging environment, which contribute to their rapid growth. Lipids aid cancer cell activation. Cancer cells absorb lipids with the help of transporter and translocase proteins to obtain energy. Abnormal levels of a series of lipid synthases contribute to the over-accumulation of lipids in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Lipid reprogramming plays an essential role in the TME. Lipids are closely linked to several immune cells and their phenotypic transformation. The reprogramming of tumor lipid metabolism further promotes immunosuppression, which leads to immune escape. This event significantly affects the progression, treatment, recurrence, and metastasis of cancer. Therefore, the present review describes alterations in the lipid metabolism of immune cells in the TME and examines the connection between lipid metabolism and immunotherapy.

LDH-A Promotes Metabolic Rewiring in Leucocytes from the Intestine of Rats Treated with TNBS

Although the aetiology of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) is still unknown, one of their main characteristics is that the immune system chronically affects the permeability of the intestinal lamina propria, in turn altering the composition of the microbiota. In this study, the TNBS rat model of colitis was used because it contains a complex inflammatory milieu of polymorphonuclear cells (PMN) and lymphocytes infiltrating the lamina propria. The aim of the present study was to investigate six dehydrogenases and their respective adaptations in the tissue microenvironment by quantifying enzymatic activities measured under substrate saturation conditions in epithelial cells and leukocytes from the lamina propria of rats exposed to TNBS. Our results show that in the TNBS group, an increased DAI score was observed due to the presence of haemorrhagic and necrotic areas in the colon. In addition, the activities of G6PDH and GADH enzymes were significantly decreased in the epithelium in contrast to the increased activity of these enzymes and increased lactate mediated by the LDH-A enzyme in leukocytes in the lamina propria of the colon. Over the past years, evidence has emerged illustrating how metabolism supports aspect of cellular function and how a metabolic reprogramming can drive cell differentiation and fate. Our findings show a metabolic reprogramming in colonic lamina propria leukocytes that could be supported by increased superoxide anion.